In article <dubin.722276833 at spot.Colorado.EDU> dubin at spot.colorado.edu writes:
>LOTS of evidence shows that fixing the strabismus later in life,
>whether surgically, with muscle exercises, or glasses, WILL NOT
>lead to a restoration of stereoscopic depth perception. Experiments
>on cats and primates have clearly shown that cells in the visual
>cortex are "mis-wired" and can no longer subserve the depth
>perception. And, there is no known way or treatment that will
>allow the cells to re-connect properly.
That's interesting. I wonder if it has something to do with
activity-dependent synaptogenesis during development or early life (i.e.,
not enough activity, and the cells won't connect correctly. This
phenomenon sounds a lot like an experiment done by Wiesel and Hubel in
which newborn monkeys were deprived of vision in one eye for about six
months. As a result, retinal ganglion cells from that eye appeared to
connect correctly to the lateral geniculate, but the lateral geniculate
didn't connect correctly to visual cortex. Basically, the animal could
never see properly out of that eye.
(Sorry if everyone already knows this; I just learned about it, and think
it's really neat. :-))
--
Rebecca A. Drayer, EMT-A | drayer at minerva.cis.yale.edu
Neurobiology major | Computing Assistant
| Silliman College, Yale University